Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Jay Defreo's Rose
For eight years it was pretty much all she worked on at an apartment in San Francisco she shared with her husband. She loved to entertain and share her life with the other Beat Scene artists of the time and the legend of the painting travelled to the east coast and her work was included in a show curated by Dorothy Miller in 1959 called "Sixteen Americans."
DeFreo did not attend the show and neither did her monumental painting which eventually had to be removed from the apartment along with part of an exterior wall - by a crane - when a rent increase meant eviction for the artist and her husband, Wally Hedrick.
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| Jay DeFreo working on The Rose in San Francisco by Jerry Burchard |
The Rose eventually ended up in a conference room at the San Francisco Art Institute (eventually covered by a false wall) to later be removed and restored after her death from lung cancer in 1989.
Last year there was a retrospective of her work at The Whitney Museum of American Art.
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| Jay DeFreo's The Rose at The Whitney Museum of Modern Art photo by Philip Greenberg for The New York Times |
Much of her artwork is held in The Jay DeFeo Trust which she set up before her death. This site shows photos of much of her work over the years; many of the photos she created in the 1970's; The Loop Series, Tripod Series, Shoetree Series, Compass Series, and some of her paintings from the 70's, Lotus Eater and Cabbage Rose. And her work in the 1980's; Eternal Triangle, Summer Landscape, Impressions of Africa, Samurai, La Brea, Mirage, Blue Nile and Black Canyon... and more.
She created for herself and for no one else and I love the authenticity of it.
Tomorrow I'll be talking about British artist, Rita Donagh.
I hope you are enjoying your day.
'Til tomorrow!
~Alex
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